Business travel

Should La Guardia be closed?

FOLLOWING the decision by America's Department of Transportation to shelve plans to auction take-off and landing slots at airports in New York City, Stephen Dubner, writing on the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, suggests a solution to the air congestion: close La Guardia. A pilot who Mr Dubner meets at the airport gives him a rationale.

The problem, as he explained it, is that the airspace for each of the three airports extends cylindrically into the sky above its ground position. Because of their relative proximity, the three airspace cylinders affect one another significantly, which creates congestion not just because of volume but because pilots have to thread the needle and fly needlessly intricate approach routes in order to comply.

If the LaGuardia cylinder were eliminated, he said, Newark and J.F.K. would both operate much more freely — and, since LaGuardia handles far less traffic than the other two airports, it is the obvious choice for shuttering.

Lots of comments follow to the effect that closing La Guardia would merely send myriad extra passengers to JFK and Newark airports, creating traffic snarl-ups on the roads, reducing passenger choice and perhaps exacerbating congestion in the air. Some 23m passengers used La Guardia in 2008—a lot of traffic to reallocate to JFK and Newark, which served 83m passengers between them. Better, maybe (surely?), to put more money into updating the air-traffic-control system.

How about that high-speed rail your colleagues at DiA were talking about? I would think taking out even 50% of the flights between NY-BOS and NY-WAS would make a pretty heavy dent in the overall traffic.

So, the solution to the underinvestment in the air traffic control system by the government and the clogging of the system with commuter flights carrying less than forty passengers each, is to add an additional inconvenience to passengers? Sounds like the basic mindset of central planners.

I have to agree that a high speed train will be a good way to reduce air traffic, and now that we know that the puddle-jumper pilots are abused so much, there should be a fall-off in those flights as well. I have avoided puddle-jumpers for years, especially in bad weather! It's time to subsidize more practical forms of transportation than planes and cars anyway--European trains run on time and have cheap tickets if you can plan ahead.

Speaking as a non-wealthy, non-politcally connected Brooklynite, closing LaGuardia is a terrible idea. EWR is a ginormous pain in the neck to get to and ridiculously expensive by cab (~$60-$80). JFK is also not easily and conveniently reached. Trust me, schlepping luggage down the Subway stairs, through the turnstiles, down to the platform, onto the 1st train, transferring to the next train (up and down more stairs) and then to the AirTrain, yada, yada... is as unpleasant as it is painful -- for days. And again to take a cab is expensive. Not to mention the amount of time it takes on the Subway -- it
is an additional two hours added onto your trip.
Whereas LaGuardia is a 20 minute, $20 cab drive -- can't beat it.

Playing along this hypothetical scenario, one could close LaGuardia, but expand airports farther afield, namely Long Island (which Southwest serves aggressively) and White Plains (currently limited to propeller planes). If the subway and rail system from Manhattan could also be improved to Newark and JFK, that would also be an argument to shut down the only airport in NYC with no rail access at all.